Neville Goddard on Exodus 38:1-3 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Exodus 38 in context

Scripture Focus

1And he made the altar of burnt offering of shittim wood: five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof; it was foursquare; and three cubits the height thereof.

2And he made the horns thereof on the four corners of it; the horns thereof were of the same: and he overlaid it with brass.

3And he made all the vessels of the altar, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons, and the fleshhooks, and the firepans: all the vessels thereof made he of brass.

Exodus 38:1-3

Biblical Context

Exodus 38:1-3 details the altar built of shittim wood, overlaid with brass, with horns on its corners and brass vessels. It frames sacrifice as the heartbeat of true worship and covenant loyalty.

Neville's Inner Vision

On the page, the altar is not a thing out there but a picture of a state of consciousness I enter. The shittim wood speaks of a sturdy, yielding self—the worn-out ego made alive by feeling and intention. When the altar is overlaid with brass, remember brass is the color of manifest assurance, the mental law reflecting back what I hold in awareness. The horns at the four corners stand for the corners of consciousness: time, space, memory, and desire—each is brought under the one Light that I AM. The vessels—pots, shovels, basins, fleshhooks, firepans—are the activities of the mind under the ruling of the I AM; they are tools through which heat, removal, and bearing of sacrifice are performed as inner acts, not external rituals. In this inner temple, the offering is not animal but the former self, burned away by the realization that God and I are one. When I imagine these things as present now, I am choosing to live exclusively from the center of my being, embracing holiness, true worship, and covenant loyalty as states of consciousness I inhabit.

Practice This Now

Close your eyes and gently assume the state of I AM as the altar within. Revise any sense of separation by affirming: I and God are one; the old self is willingly offered and transformed.